Lawmakers Exhorted To Develop Child-Care Policy

Washington--Witnesses before a joint Congressional panel last week
called on lawmakers to establish a national child-development policy
that would assure children adequate health care and education.

"Currently, our country has the least comprehensive child care
policy and program of any western industrialized nation," said Irving
Hamer, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Education
Department, speaking before the Joint Economic Committee last week.

The hearing was the seventh in a series of jec hearings focusing on
education and its relationship to the quality of the workforce.

Citing high rates of infant mortality, hunger, illness, lead
poisoning, and homelessness in the nation's low-income communities, as
well as the lack of inexpensive early-childhood education, as factors
contributing to the cycle of school failure, Mr. Hamer said the federal
government has a responsibility to "end such conditions."

Bettye W. Topps, principal of McKinley High School in Washington,
told the committee that for many students there is little to support
the notion that education is of value.

For most minority students, she said, public education is "their
only hope," yet they quickly see that teachers and schools are openly
discussed with disdain by political leaders and the media.

"The shortcomings of public education are waved like a red flag
before them," Ms. Topps said. "The subliminal message is 'why
try'."

In addition, Ms. Topps said, the most educated person many students
know is the teacher, yet the teacher is not a good example of the
economic value of an education. In many cases, the person who seems
most successful, she said, is the drug dealer.

The answer to these attitudinal problems, Ms. Topps said, lies in
early intervention. She echoed Mr. Hamer's call for federal leadership
in establishing early-intervention programs, including prenatal care,
and nutrition and preschool programs.

She called on elementary schools to sharpen their detection of
potential dropouts, usually signaled by low attendance rates and low
reading levels, and to intervene with counseling for such students and
their parents.

Programs that focus on remedial education, counseling, vocational
education and work experiences, and alternative school environments at
the intermediate and secondary levels also can have an impact on the
dropout problem, she said.

Signithia Fordham, professor of anthropology at the University of
the District of Columbia, suggested that teachers should take a
group-learning approach to motivate minority students to seek
success.

Ms. Fordham conducted a two-year study in an area high school on
academic performance among black students. (See Education Week, March
25, 1987.) She told the committee that the emphasis on individual
achievement in the classes she observed seemed to be counter-productive
in motivating black students.

Black students are a part of a race, or a "people," with a
collective identity, Ms. Fordham contended. "There are historical,
structural, and cultural factors unique to black Americans. They have
made changes through group efforts, not individual successes."

She noted that the black students who did strive for individual
academic success were often chastised by their peers for "acting
white."

Because blacks have not achieved equal status within society, even
when they possess equal skills and credentials, they have developed an
unwillingness to compete individually in many arenas, including the
school, Ms. Fordham said.

When a student does "compete," that student is often viewed as
breaking away from the group.

As a remedy, Ms. Fordham suggested incorporating group-centered
learning into classroom instruction. By stressing the "we can" instead
of "I can," she said, peer pressure can be turned from a negative into
a positive force, and may ultimately result in a higher school
completion and success rate for minority students.--rrw

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